Ned gets to his point quickly. Because g boxingc.works,
and it works better than most Asian martial arts.h Ned doesnft have
anything against judo, Tai chi, karate, kung fu, and taekwondo. These are
ok for developing mental discipline, spiritual perfection, and as hobbies,
he says, but for reigning supreme in bar brawls and cellblock riots,
boxing is the art of choice.

Actually, Ned spends the first chapter
justifying boxing. In order not to alienate the Asian martial arts
gstylistsh among his potential readers, he recommends supplementing
whatever you have already done with boxing. Basically, he says, any style
will work if you are good enough. The first chapter is actually pretty
incoherent. Ned seems unsure what position he wants to take vis-a-vis the
Asian martial arts. If you need to be convinced that boxing works, maybe
this book wonft do it for you. However, if you already suspect that boxing
skills do have their place in genuine personal unarmed gcombath, then this
book can serve a useful purpose. It is a fairly reliable and reasonably
comprehensive guide to the science and sport of boxing.

Principles of the Ring and of the Street explains more
specifically why boxing rules. The reasons are that boxing teaches you how
to control your aggression, how to use momentum to produce power, how to
take a punch, and how to put together combinations. Ned exaggerates when
he says that boxers spar almost every workout and implies that the
sparring is full contact. Neither is true. Sparring is a small part of a
boxerfs training and it is rarely full contact. It is simply too damaging
to do it frequently. You would, as they say gleave your fight in the gymh.
There is no substitute for having the experience of taking punches. But it
is not true that the more punches you take the better you will get at
taking them. On the contrary, taking punches makes you less rather than
more able to take punches. What taking a few--not a lot of--punches does
is remove the surprise factor and motivate you to learn ways to minimize
the number of punches you do take and to minimize the impact of those that
you canft avoid. Boxers donft like getting hit anymore than anyone else
does. Probably less, since they know what it feels like and typically get
hit a lot harder than the average person ever does.

Gloves and Bare Fists deals with the subject of
protecting the hands and wrists, something that is taken very seriously in
a boxing gym. One bad wrap job can ruin a fighter's career and hitting
something with unwrapped hands is unthinkable, an algorithm for disaster.
Ned gives us a short history lesson in this chapter. Youfve heard of the
old time fighters, who were tough, and unlike the current crop of
pantywaists, who think 10 rounds is a lot, these old timers fought fights
of 40, 50, 60 and more rounds. Of course, the rules were a bit different.
Rounds were not three minutes but rather ended whenever a boxer touched
the ground, which could happen a lot because wrestling was permitted. If a
fighter did go down, he had 30 seconds to get back up and be ready to
resume. Moreover, since the fighters did not wear gloves, they tended to
avoid hitting hard, bony body parts, like elbows and skulls. (If you
watch film of any fight before the Dempsey era, you might be surprised at
how few punches actually get thrown). By the time John L. Sullivan lost
his heavyweight crown to Gentleman Jim Corbett in 1892, the Marquis of
Queensbury rules were in effect and fighters protected their hands with
gloves. In the remainder of the chapter Ned explains how to make a fist,
how to wrap the hands, and how to land the punch. The first is somewhat
ironic because it is in karate classes that you learn how to make a fist.
With the hand wrapped and a thumbless glove on, you frankly canft make a
proper, anatomically stable fist. The tape primarily keeps the fingers
curled in tight (necessary to avoid snapping the delicate phalanges and
exploding the metacarpals with a powerful impact), and the wrist straight
(to avoid tearing the ligaments). There are many ways to wrap and Ned
shows one of them. It should be noted that the primary purpose of the wrap
is to gather up all 19 (in each hand) small bones (the five metacarpals
and fourteen phalanges), so that together they have enough mass to resist
the impacts that will come when the punch lands, and to bind up the 8
small bones (the carpals) that constitute the wrist so that they do not
explode on impact. The junction of the distal end of the ulna and the
carpum are also wrapped to prevent excessive flexion.

Every karate man knows to land his punch on the two
largest knuckles, and does knuckle push-ups to strengthen his wrist, which
will be in an awkward position as a result. Ned thinks this is wrong and
cites the support of Jack Dempsey for a gthree knuckle landingh. This
yields more power, a slightly longer range, and a more stable wrist. It is
precisely the way boxers land punches when they have gloves on. The only
problem that I can see is that it is impossible to do it without
gloves.

The Physics and Psychology of Power Punching. Therefs no
secret to punching hard. Itfs all physics. Of course, you have to
understand human anatomy to apply the physics. But once you do that,
youfll be able to hit with power. (Obviously, there is more to knocking
tough opponents out than merely punching hard, and that is where the
science of boxing comes in). The physics of punching hard can be summed up
very succinctly: Force is the product of mass and velocity (more
concretely in this example, of weight and speed), so the maximum force you
can generate is ultimately limited by how much mass (your own bodyweight)
you can put into motion, and how fast you can do it. Obviously, velocity
does not mean speed alone, but rather speed and direction. So part of the
process is making sure youfre moving your weight in the right direction,
which of course, even if it doesnft always exactly seem that way (to the
novice at least, in the case of hooks), is in the direction of your
target. Ned describes the various ways boxers move their weight
(basically, by stepping, twisting, and shifting).

In this and in every chapter, Ned illustrates his points
with historical anecdotes. He caps off the chapter with hints on how to
use visualization to build killer instinct. Ned believes that knocking an
opponent cold is the best way to deal with a street confrontation. The
reader will have to be the judge of that. The fact that Ned Beaumont told
you to do it will not help you at all if your case goes to court
(anticipating this, the publisher and author include not just one but two
separate disclaimers: gThis book is for academic study onlyh.)

Stance and Guard teaches how to stand and where to have
your hands (the short answer is, guph). Stance is an often misunderstood
concept, as Ned rightly mentions. It isnft a static position, as in a kung
fu pose, but rather a configuration of body parts that permits both
protection and mobility. Stance is an individual matter. It depends on
your body type, your boxing style, your opponentfs style, and the physical
environment. You create your own stance through trial and error in
practice, Ned says.

Straight Punches deals with jabs and crosses. The subject
of the jab deserves a whole book to itself. Ned does a pretty good job
explaining the uses and varieties of the jab. Every boxing trainer will
tell you that the jab is the most important punch. It is the first one
they teach you. Possibly for one reason, it is the only punch that seems
to make intuitive sense when thrown from the proper hands up position. If
you look at old fight film, youfll see guys, even such supposedly
scientific boxers as Jim Corbett, with their left hands down, apparently
protecting their thighs. The punch they threw with their left hand was a
kind of a swing and no one threw deliberate mixed combinations. Fights
tended to be long and drawn out, with the fighters usually out of range.
Once in a while, one would leap in with a single shot, usually a haymaker.
The idea of creating openings for heavy shots by using light shots, and
throwing a continuous stream of punches didnft exist back then. No one
knows who invented the jab but whoever it was, he was a genius. Even light
jabs can hurt and unbalance your opponent, and as Jack Johnson said, a man
canft do much to you when you have your left hand constantly in his face.
Ned recommends landing the jab with the thumb turned up.

Hooks and Uppercuts deals with punches that are delivered
with a bent elbow. In addition to hooks and uppercuts, this category also
includes a variation, dubbed by Jack Dempsey the gshovel hookh. The shovel
hook is a mixture of hook and uppercut, delivered to the body. In terms of
limiting your criminal liabilities and risk to your own hands, this is a
great punch for self defense purposes, and the fact that it is
administered at close range is another plus. Ned rounds out the chapter
with a cursory discussion of in-fighting.

Combinations and Related Matters. Ned describes a bunch
of one, two, and three punch combinations. After the third punch, the
future becomes unpredictable, so it doesnft really pay to plan out longer
combinations, Ned claims. Ifm not sure. If you work on combinations of
seven or eight punches, even though your opponent may interrupt the
sequence by running, clinching, or even counterpunching, you will still be
able to execute it when he doesnft do any of those. What if you only have
three punch combinations? Do you have to stop and begin another three
punch combination?

It might be best to think of combinations generatively.
Whatever punch you start with can be followed with one or more other
punches, but not with just any punch. And so on. So there will be certain
combinations that are ggrammaticalh (as it were), and others that are not
(which doesnft mean that ungrammatical combinations, like sentences, canft
occasional be effective). Therefore, as Chomsky might say if he wrote
about boxing instead of linguistics, philosophy, and mathematics, the
class of potential grammatical combinations is infinite.

The Related Matters Ned refers to are targets. These are
the standard spots. He advises against punching someone in the mouth if
you donft have gloves. Ned mentions the arms as targets, but very briefly.
In fact, the biceps are excellent targets and so are the hands, and the
deltoids (Kenny Norton worked hard on attacking Alifs deltoid to slow his
jabs down, and the tactic worked for him). Another good target Ned
neglects is the thigh. Punching someonefs thigh makes as much sense as
kicking their head, you might think. But in fact, there will be times when
his thigh will be perfectly within safe range (for example, after you have
bobbed and weaved, or if you are bent over and he is leaning on you, maybe
in certain contexts, he has a front naked choke on you). You arenft in any
danger of hurting your hand (and you can use your elbow just as easily).
These shots are painful and if they penetrate deeply enough to impact the
nerve, they will reduce your opponent's mobility considerably.

Defense: The Art of Not Getting Hit. Hitting hard is only
half of the science of boxing. The other half is not getting
hit.

@Ned
covers the fundamentals of deflecting, blocking (including covering),
avoiding (slipping, ducking, and simply staying or moving out of range),
and minimizing the cost if the above methods fail (rolling). Each
technique is illustrated with historical examples. Ned concludes by saying
that for street purposes the best defense is to attack aggressively.

Fouls and Other Dirty Tricks covers techniques that are
illegal in modern boxing--although not nonexistent--but well known in
other martial arts, such as hammer fists, heel of the hand strikes,
elbows, kicks, throws, tackles, among others. It also describes illegal
targets, such as the back of the neck, eyes, and regions gbelow the belth.
Ned emphasizes that you should not focus too much on the nads--other areas
below the belt can be even more effective.

Ned seems to be losing his thread in this chapter. How do
elbows, tackles, and judo throws prove that boxing is an effective martial
art for the street? Nedfs reply might be that some of these techniques
were permitted under the London Prize Ring rules (granted this was a while
back), and others, while prohibited both before and after the adoption of
the Marquis of Queensbury Rules around 1892, are still practiced from time
to time. It isnft unknown for boxers to bite their opponents, for example.
It seems to be fairly effective too. Notice Evander's reaction when Mike
bit him. Mike lost the fight of course, but on the street losing has a
different meaning. (Incidentally, the Marquis, a boxing buff, was the
father of Oscar Wildefs gay boyfriend. Wilde himself however was not known
to be an aficionado of the manly arts).

Training: Roadwork, Gymwork, and Floorwork describes the
methods that boxers use to prepare for battle in the ring. As lightweight
king Billy Conn (who almost beat Joe Louis) said, a good in-shape fighter
will always beat a great out-of-shape fighter. No one who has competed in
any sport will need to be told that conditioning is important. More is
better. But because skills are also important, and time and energy are
finite, some limits have to be placed on how much conditioning work is
done. After all, if the most you need to go is 12 rounds, you donft need
to prepare for 50. As Kenny
Weldon says, you need to prepare for the kind of fight you are going
to have. The best conditioning work is work that combines conditioning
with skills development. Ned overrates the importance of roadwork
(running). The primary purpose of running should be to burn calories and
to relax. Running does not develop relevant attributes or skills for
boxing. Moreover, the fact that boxers do something is not irrefutable
proof that it is the right thing to do or the best way to do it.

Nedfs comments on sparring leads me to wonder how much
time he has actually spent in a boxing gym. Sparring is indeed important,
but primarily because it is a less damaging version of an actual contest
(or fight). But it is still damaging. Every fighter has a certain number
of fights (or rounds) in him. If he g leaves them in the gymh, he wonft
have them when he most needs them. This is why boxers seldom spar. When
they do, it is with bulkier gloves, headgear of course, for few rounds,
and with a tacit agreement to set the level of intensity a few notches
down (to borrow a phrase from the French sociologist Löic Wacquant, who
actually trained and competed). By way of comparison, Thai boxers in
Thailand (Muay Thai fighters that is), never spar, for two
excellent reasons. One is that they fight often. The other is that their
most distinguished art of fighting (as one author describes it) is simply
too dangerous. In compensation, they work even more extensively with pads
than Western boxers do (and they also do a lot of hard competitive clinch
work). This lack of sparring doesnft seem to prevent them from polishing
their skills to a high level, as an evening at Lumphinee Stadium in
Bangkok will convince most people.

In general, this chapter was pretty basic. If you
actually want to know how boxers train, get Kenny Weldonfs tapes (or at
least, read the review).

It is largely due to this chapter that I suspect Ned got
most of his material from the books that he mentions in his annotated
bibliography gFrom the Ring to the Library.h I recall reading one that he
mentions and rightly praises, by Jack Dempsey, when I was a young kid
growing up on the mean streets of Silicon Valley, back when it had cherry
orchards and computers were still the size of houses. I studied the method
the Manassas Mauler used to such devastating effect himself, and
which made good intuitive sense and didnft require you to learn
calligraphy and Oriental philosophy, but it didnft help me tremendously in
street scuffles, which, being a kid at the time, I had a fair share
of.

You arenft going to learn how to fight by reading this or
any other book (you have to go to a gym and train with boxers under the
tutelage of a qualified trainer). But Championship Streetfighting
is informative and entertaining. Itfs worth reading

Buy the book and judge for yourself:

@

@

@

And it you liked Championship
Streetfighting, you might also like Ned's other book, The Savage
Science of Streetfighting. I read it and it's not bad, mostly
common-sense lessons derived from the practices of the old-timers, which
is not a bad place to begin. As Benjamin Franklin and George Santayana
both said, in their own ways, it's usually cheaper and less painful to
learn from the experiences of others than to try to start from scratch
yourself.